Have you noticed any change in battery performance on BasicSync? I’ve been thinking about switching over; aside from the poor dev transition/communication, the new version by ResearchXXL started chewing through my battery life. Used an older version of the app and confirmed that it used less energy, but was too concerned about possible security exploits in what is a very popular p2p application with extensive file permissions…

Why do you think a client should have to download a dark mode CSS separately? Have you put any thought into why that is treated as a separate request, rather than a function of an existing page that could be switched between offline without any acknowledgement sent from the client?

Web standards have been butchered to force these constant validation measures for the sole purpose of telemetry/spyware. A client should be able to render a web page however the fuck it wants and the server that sent the page should be none the wiser.

And what of things like battery status? That has no legitimate purpose at all. No web site is going to change its behavior in response to your battery status, but current charge % and battery wear stats alone are enough to perfectly distinguish your mobile device from anyone else that you would be sharing a IP address with.

I can hate them both. 90% of this info has no legitimate reason to leave the clients machine. In a world where open source development is still legal and available, I don’t see why its so hard to have a web browser that doesn’t broadcast every single hardware detail about your machine.

I hate how this situation is spoken about as a lost cause. People in the comments section here are acting like this information is required for the web to work at all. Probably weren’t alive at a time where websites could be stored offline because they didn’t expect constant client validation. Multiple comments acting like light/dark mode requires a server request, and couldn’t just be handled offline by the clients browser choosing how to render stuff after its been downloaded. Bet they think the web server needs to know the time zone too.

So that you can run interactive 3D applications like games in your browser.

Hardware info does not need to be sent server side to accomplish this. OpenGL and Vulkan APIs can both say what the current hardware supports without hardware identifiers. A malicious website could probably still fingerprint based off those listed features, but that’s just a justification for “don’t accept requests for GPU hardware acceleration without user permission”. Currently modern web browsers broadcast it no matter what the page is requesting.

To adjust the performance of a web application to save more power.

Name me one web “page” that does this. A web “application” doesn’t count. My native browser should should never broadcast this, ever.

To give you matching website.

Can/should be ran client side.

Again to adjust performance or to pause an application.

Can/should be ran client side. Its none of the websites/applications business whether I have frozen its process or not.

Is often used to give you a download link that matches your OS.

A small quality of life, isn’t worth it. Thankfully its the easiest thing to fake/lie about on this list. Most of these “features” on this list are not user facing and cannot be turned off with basic configurations.

A lot of this accounts older posts are on Lemmy.world, is your instance defederated from there?

Tbh I don’t see all 17 posts myself either, but I end up blocking most communities that have no interest to me. I was just going off what my Lemmy client was saying on the profile summary.

??? They have 17 posts listed when I check their profile. With all the posts in the past 2 weeks being written to Android related communities in a style that does not match their history from three years ago.

Their comments are written like madlib paragraph blocks.

Absolutely bizzare. The account doesn’t post for 2 years, and then suddenly is spamming about every Android topic one can think of in the exact same cadence. No similarity between the old comment habits either.

It looks like the kind of account selling/repurposed you would see on Reddit after making a lot of karma but… obviously these communities do not have the kind of social pull that would justify that. Why do this??

Cool, its never been like that and you kept buying Android devices anyway?

I’d like that too. In what way does “things should be better” counter argument “this update changes nothing”? EDIT: No really, if you have either of these hypothetical phones, what can you not install after this update that you could before? I got shit I want to install but cant because of restrictions to root made in Android 4+. Haven’t been to able to run a OS outside of Android since the Pixel 3 era. Am I supposed to reach peak anger over Android being a shitty platform with every change they make? Is that useful or helpful to you? Was I supposed to start my comment with an entire history of Googles anti user behavior so you understand I am not defending them?

I’m gonna stop commenting honestly. Y’all just wanna be mad. Tried to dispel a rage bait article and ended up wasting my time. You already knew what the article was about and wanted to get mad again anyway. There is more useful stuff to do than get mad at someone who agrees with everything you said. Please work on your reading comprehension.

I specifically said publishing. Publishers/developers are not the average person. And the people installing third party apps on the user hostile platform of Android are also already dealing with friction. I’m more concerned with developers giving up because they need to do unacceptable ID verification, or are outright banned from development APKs entirely, than users giving up because “this takes too long…” Frankly, you ignoring the context of my post comes off as you just wanting to be angry.

I read the headline, I read the article, and I answered the rage bait presented in said headline. The impact of this change is “fuck all and nothing”. I’ve got plenty of web sites that are inaccessible without getting around geoblocks with a VPN. Been in communities shut down by corporate media throwing money and legal teams at denying their right to exist. Feels like everyone wants a federal ID to use an online service these days, and Google wont be that far behind doing their own version of it. But this update changes literally nothing for power users right now. Sorry that I’m not as upset because the slippery slope isn’t as steep as everyone else says it is.

If you really want something worth being mad at, get mad at the hardware manufactures who release hardware with proprietary firmware that only runs on Android. Wouldn’t be having this discussion at all if users were allowed to run completely custom software from boot. If there was an open standard for a battery powered device that could run a modern compliant web browser, and take SMS/phone calls, we could tell Google to kick sand. Instead we have an ocean of built-to-expire mobile phones that end up being “obsolete” within 2 years. I’m pretty sure the mobile carriers/ISPs have more control over what hardware is allowed to exist though. I should probably do more research on that.

I agree. I do not want to come off as defending Google here. Things will get worse as they always have, and the sooner we got off Googles corporate platform, the better. Google has no business forcing themselves as a “trusted central source”, especially with all the evidence showing that the Play Store is a more common and successful attack vector than third party apks. Third party offerings should be as easy and accessible as Googles.

I guess I’m just really annoyed at the public response because it continues to be doom and gloom; as if open source app development was going to die overnight due to this one change. I’m pointing out that there is already more restrictive things on the Android platform, and big projects still exist despite that. As hostile as a development platform Android has been, a new one time, 24 hour scare screen is likely not going to be the final straw for developers.

Saving you a click:

Read the fine print carefully, and Google’s new app-loading processes aren’t as invasive as they could have been. For many users, nothing will change. Even for users exploring apps outside Google’s walled garden, the process is usually a one-time setup with a few simple steps and a short wait, keeping the experience virtually the same as it is today.

We have phone manufacturers who offer unlocked boot loaders as a feature, but require two weeks or more of device ownership, registration using personally identifiable info for an online account, and many times don’t even allow you to relock the boot loader. Despite all this hassle, these devices still get updated third party OS’s with Lineage and eOS.

Anyone who was publishing to FDroid already is not going to be annoyed give up over the 24 hour scare screen for users. The most inconvenient aspect is that they can’t use the same signing keys as a Google Play release, which they should never have been doing anyway. Its absurd that developers were using the same signing keys across all different distribution methods in the first place.

EDIT: Phrasing. Everything about Android is annoying.

Wanna give a source for that? Everything I read said that after the 24 hour scare screen, you could optionally enable third party installation permanently. Literally nothing about certificates expiring. Where are you even getting this from?

It was also an option to not make a useless field. Not like this self reported dob is going to cut it for the existing age verification laws as is exists now. But I can be mad at people in a position of community production for not having a spine, too.

How is this supposed to be making the best of the situation anyway? It accomplished nothing but piss off the community and signify to authoritarians that open source developers are ready to bend over for them. Simply threaten unenforceable fines across the world and suddenly everything is hopeless. Better get ready to comply, its inevitable! Its pathetic. Ageless Linux might be performative bs, but at least its critical of this over reach instead of intentionally signalling compliance in advance.

Good system design doesn’t do things without me asking it to. I’ll gladly manually re enter my birth date for an external service if its required, which to be clear, should be as close to 0 times as possible. What, should I keep all my job application info in the initialization system too? Because a website I’m on might ask for it at some point? Don’t want to be too redundant.

Literally this field serves no purpose other than to build compliance with the surveillance state. No end user asked for this. Like I said, can’t imagine any end user making use of the existing systemd fields either. But those also didn’t get any attention because they weren’t made as a reaction to threats by a malicious regime.

it’s in one place that any third party can reference.

But why would I want that?

Even if you ignore the whole “this doesn’t verify anything” discussion, why would I want to give third parties easy access to personal and potentially sensitive information? I personally am not interested in simplifying data collection for corporate entities who definitely do not give a shit about the safety of my personal data, let alone hypothetical children. I do not know why this data collection needs or would be desired to be implemented within systemd, besides being a direct response to age verification laws saying its an OS providers responsibility to collect it. Arbitrary data collection by private entities is not “useful”. My personal data has no business being referenced by random asshats that ask for it. There are so few things in the world that “justify” needing my age that I would suggest it would be easier to make my birth date a permanent data point on my PC. Same goes for the other personal details that systemd already supports. Crazy to imagine anyone actually using those on a personal machine.

I don’t like this theory because they have already had access to this information with social media. Individuals willingly volunteer this information about themselves and their friends, and data brokers would collect and centralize it from multiple sources. This is why some platforms were trying out AI age verification in countries that hadn’t officially mandated ID verification yet. They were confident enough, with all the info they had already collected, to assume someone’s age. They would hope that the people who fail the check would be few enough to not cause an immediate uproar(“just verify with ID, what’s the big deal?”)

This is most certainly more of an authoritarian power grab to prevent any anonymous criticism what so ever. Id verification will allow them to target any application that does not comply and preserves user privacy. Anyone who does not comply will be implied to be a criminal or enemy of the state. They want to make a system where corporate surveillance cannot be avoided.

The corporations lobbying for this want to benefit from being a part of the fascist state, but don’t want to handle any legal obligation or public scrutiny from the obvious damages that will come from collecting this information. That’s why you have different companies lobbying for different “solutions”; whatever keeps them from facing repercussions but still makes them money for being a part of the surveillance state is what they will support.

They likely don’t want to let people down by dropping the project entirely.

I wouldn’t assume a person who actively taunts their critics with hidden AI contributions in their code would give any amount of shit what the community thinks, actually. Very clear sign of “I do what I want to, anyone who disagrees can get bent”. Clearly doesn’t mind letting down the majority with AI slop.

What a crazy hypothetical you made up, “left of center”, considering the Republican party was pushing for federal ID verification for online services years before Democrats caught up to speed. Red states brought this up first and resulted in multiple porn sites banning users in those states.

But yes, online censorship and corporate surveillance is a bipartisan issue in the two party system of fascists. You will not be able to “vote” these issues away.

Teamspeak 6 self hosted servers are in open beta, and is a comparable experience in quality/features to people looking for a Discord replacement. All the open source Discord clones don’t have group screen sharing available yet.

This AMA is about the new ownership, and they talk about allowing online services as a form of DRM in it. So at least that policy is staying in place.

I’ve got “Good Old Games” that are more than 20 years old with self hostable online multiplayer. No accounts, no CD keys, nothing. Make a random plain text display name, forward some ports or use a community/proxy server, and you can play with whoever you like. GOG can make excuses as much as they want to try to appeal to publishers, but they are by definition hosting games with DRM.